University of Virginia Library

19. CHAPTER XIX.
MARGARET ACCEPTS SAMUEL.

TEN days or a fortnight following, upon the evening
that closed our last chapter, brought nothing
remarkable to pass. The same comments upon
the runaway match, if match it were, had been
made forty times, at least, and the zest with
which the affair had at first been discussed, had lost its
keen edge.

“Mrs. Whiteflock will drop her feathers now!” or
words to that effect, had been pronounced a great many
times, too, and her name was beginning to be mentioned
with a sigh of sympathy. “She sees her own troubles, poor
lady,” the humbler of her neighbors were saying; “and I,
for one, wouldn't put a straw in her way.” But they said
this as though the forbearance were marvellously gracious,
and almost as though they added, “I wouldn't take a straw
out of her way, neither!” And if the naked truth had been
stripped out, I am afraid that few would have been found
really and truly sorry for the loss of the carriage. “It's
too bad,” they said, “that Luther Larky should have taken
the beautiful phaeton into the bargain! And Mrs. Whiteflock
never once to have set her foot in it! just think!” But the
tone of these pitiful exclamations was apt to be a little triumphant
in the stead of a little tender.

“Will she show her head at church?” was a question that

ran from mouth to mouth; and when Sunday came and
went, and she had not filled her accustomed place, there was
many a significant nod and wink among the members of the
congregation.

She had a little modesty, as they were glad to see!

Mr. Gayfeather, meantime, was making himself the most
agreeable man in the neighborhood; he knew everybody,
from the foremost farmers and churchmen, to the lowest
menial of the Eagle Hotel, and all who knew him had some
kind word to say of him. “A good fellow!” every one
said — not a good man, mark you — and it was not uncommon
to hear young men of half his years addressing him as
“Charley.” He continually courted popularity. If he
chanced to meet Miss Goke, for instance, he contrived to
make it appear that Miss Goke, of all persons, was the one
it gave him most pleasure to meet; that taking off his hat
to her was, in fact, almost an infinite delight, so that the
smile Miss Goke fetched up in acknowledgment, usually
brightened her face for some hours after such chance meeting.
“That's a splendid colt of yours,” he would say to
the farmer; “If I were a rich man like you, I would have
him in my stables before many hours, let his price be what
it might.” And somehow the farmer would feel an added
consequence, almost as though the weight of his horse had
already been paid him in gold.

He was always just on the point of doing every one some
great service, which was seldom done in verity; but he contrived
to make the will pass for the deed to a surprising
extent. He had, in fact, a visionary shoulder that he put to
a visionary wheel upon all occasions, and as this method
neither soiled his coat nor tired his shoulder, he was always
ready to help his friends. He was not a member of the
church, he only wished he were worthy to be so, he said,
but he attended service regularly, even sang with unction,
from the hymn-book of his neighbor, and all the same whether
the neighbor chanced to be a poor old woman, an apprentice
lad, or a pretty girl. So when he said he wished he were
worthy, it went for nothing, and the good old ladies nodded
their plain bonnets, as much as to say, we will get him for
good and all, yet. He set a subscription afoot, heading it
himself with most liberal figures, for the painting, and re-furnishing
of the meeting-house, and always when the contribution-box

came round his pretty white hand went into his
pocket and out again with the liveliest degree of satisfaction,
apparently. To one rheumatic old woman he presented a
hassock, upon which the old woman set up an opinion, with
the setting down of her knees, to the effect that Mr. Gayfeather
had never been expelled from college, and so far from
being disliked by the good old bishop, he had been beloved
by him even as his own son! So much for the hassock.

“Charley Gay is a wery nice fellow, he is!” says the
cooper, one day, just as the meeting-house was beginning to
shine out from among the dingy, old gravestones with which
it was surrounded. “A wery nice fellow he is, and I can't
believe he to going to belittle himself by marrying old Katy
Lightwait!”

He had stopped at Mrs. Whiteflock's gate to inquire after
Peter when he said this, and he held his head aloft as though
he were looking down upon Miss Lightwait from some majestic
height.

“What if the belittling should turn out to be on the other
side?” says Mrs. Whiteflock, pausing on her way to the
garden.

“Tother side!” cries the cooper, with indignant astonishment;
“tother side, indeed! why Kate's an old maid,
within five or six year of his own age, I'll wenter a beer
keg onto that!”

Then Mrs. Whiteflock tells him that she should hardly expect
him to speak in that way of the maiden sisterhood, after
what she has heard. And she mentioned his reported engagement
to Miss P. Goke.

“That's a wery different thing,” says the cooper, stiffly;
“a wery different thing!” And then he says, Katy
Lightwait may be wirtuous enough for all he knows, but she
hasn't got no trade, and he can't see what Charley Gay
wants of her.

Mrs. Whiteflock smiled, and, nodding, passed him along,
and joined Peter, who was sitting in the sunshine of the garden
he had been used to cultivate with so much pains and
pleasure. As the cooper passed Miss P. Goke's window, he
gave a sharp thump on the sash, which brought her to the
door at once. “All right!” says he, motioning with his
double fist in a way to indicate that the sooner she returned
to her work, the better, and then, sauntering good-humoredly

into the grocery store he reported that he had seen Peter
Whiteflock walking in his garden, and looking just as well
as ever, and he gave it as his opinion that Dr. Allprice was
about the greatest doctor in the uniwerse! And then it ran
from one to another, until it was all over the neighborhood
and over all the country that Peter Whiteflock had been as
good as raised from the dead, and that the great Dr. Allprice
had raised him!

If the cooper had reported strictly, he would have said
that Peter was sitting in his garden, — not walking, — and
if he had taken pains to inquire he would have found that
he had not walked at all, and could not walk, but that he
had been wheeled out into the sunshine by his faithful friend
Samuel Dale, — wheeled out, when the day was at the warmest,
to look upon the fading face of things which he felt to
be fast vanishing from his sight.

If he had gone close, he would have seen in what leaden
rims his sunken eyes were set; that one arm dangled helpless,
as though it were tied at the joints by strings, and that
his feet were swollen up out of his shoes till they looked
like a couple of puff-balls; he did not go close, however,
and he did not report strictly in accordance with what he
saw at a distance, and Dr. Allprice was the gainer, so much
the more by the carelessness.

Other trump cards were played into the Doctor's hand
about this time. Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Smith contributing
largely to his winning game; each had become the mother
of a fine boy, and each was resolved to christen her child in
the Doctor's honor — “Prosper Allprice.” These two great
events were to be in some sort converted into one, by the
christening of the two children at the same time. Half the
town's women were working their hearts into baby-embroideries
for the occasion, and the general feeling was that Dr.
Allprice was somehow or other deserving of a great deal of
credit.

“I should have been childless but for him!” says Mrs.
Fairfax. “O, but his skill is something wonderful! Margaret
was in the last stage of consumption, and now she is blooming
like a rose. And nothing did it all but the Doctor's
medicine.”

“Indeed! Indeed!” said those who heard, all agape
with wonder at the little great man; and the controversy

was only as to whether the mercury or the blood-letting had
been the more efficacious.

Samuel Dale, as may be supposed, had contributed his
share to the gossip of the fortnight; he had been generally
received back with open arms, because of his heirship, it is
to be presumed, and not because of himself; but there were,
as will always happen, some that were disaffected, and foremost
among these was the bishop's son.

“Are we then to have back in the congregation and at
the sacrament,” says he, “this man who is no better than a
murderer? And all because of a little shining dust! Are
we to clasp his reeking hand as though it were milk-white,
and to call him brother?”

For his part, he was filled with holy horror at the thought,
and could not rest day nor night. In fact the laxity of the
church discipline had all at once become a sore grief to him.
He made pastoral visits with a zeal that had never actuated
him till now, stirring up all hearts, as much as he might,
against Samuel. He was not vindictive, he said, Heaven
forbid, but the church must first be pure before it could be
peaceable. One sermon was preached from the text, “Thou
shalt do no murder,” and another was against riches, from
this text: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye
of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom
of God.” And Samuel was understood to be the pointed
object of both these discourses.

“Dear Sister Whiteflock, you must bestir yourself,”
urged the anxious pastor; “it seems to me you have not
that zeal in religious matters that I have been used to count
upon.”

But she made excuses. Peter was sick and required all
her attention and care, and when he still entreated, she said
that she feared that she had hitherto had more zeal than good
works. But he would not let her off. A wrong doer was
to be dealt with, and how could she evade her Christian
obligation! Then she answered, “Let him who is without
sin, cast the first stone,” and so went carefully and
quietly about her house, teaching her children, attending
Peter, and as far as might be, maintaining the general peace.

Then he fell upon his sister Katharine with the reproachful
and impetuous manner of a young child.

Why did she not see to it that something was done! Had

she no care for him, no care for the church! no care for
anything any more, nor anybody but just this Mr. Gayfeather,
with whom she was all at once hand in glove? “I
am ashamed of you, Kate,” he cries, “you who have been
so active in all our church discipline till now!”

“Aye, active with more zeal than discretion sometimes,”
says Katherine, and she took up the cambric handkerchief
in one corner of which she was stitching letters, and examined
them with a deep and admiring interest quite as though
her mind had not been diverted from her work. She would
have been aggravated beyond measure at such words from
her brother a little while past, but the rough, jagged edge
of her nature had somehow been softened down of late, the
old, inexorable severity had melted away as it were, her
hand, always open to charity, was genially, not coldly open
now, her eyelids had lost the iron stiffness and the eyes themselves
had a light in them that was all unlike the frosty
glitter of times past. In fact the woman was changed, or
rather the creature was changed to a woman, the stony incrustation
that had been gathering over her heart, compressing
it for twenty years, had been broken through, and it
beat once more with human emotion and human sympathy.

The danger was now that she would fall into the girlish
error of blind trust and indiscriminate generosity.

“Kate, you are giving no heed to what I say,” says the
brother, importunate to have all her attention. “O yes I
am, John, but a woman can give heed to more than one
thing at a time, you see,” and she still observed the letters
with smiling satisfaction. They were C. P. G., wrought
exquisitely in lace-work. She had always put her brother
off with a single letter, and seeing the three as she held up
the handkerchief, excited his wonder, and perhaps curiosity.
“Let me see it, Kate,” he said, but instead of giving it to
him she quietly crumpled it in her hand. “I was querying,
John,” she said, looking at him at last, “as to whether your
virtuous indignation would be so aroused if the offender were
another, and not Samuel Dale.”

He did not reply to this, but said instead, “Give me the
handkerchief, I say, Kate.”

She drew her hand a little further from him, as a girl
might do in mischievous play.

Then he seized the hand and drew the handkerchief out

of it by main force, and when he saw the letters, he tore it
straight in two.

“O John,” says Katherine, “all my beautiful lace-work!
You may mend your troubles now for yourself; I shall not
help you to mend them, I can tell you!” And flouncing
out of the room she cried like a girl of sixteen.

And every day of those two weeks Samuel had been at
Mrs. Fairfax's door, morning or evening, sometimes both,
to inquire about Margaret, and to fetch her something that
might show her he still held her in tender remembrance;
now it was a basket of fruit, now a bunch of flowers, and
now, perhaps, a young pheasant, or wild pigeon. Mr.
Lightwait had made calls of inquiry, too, and once, with his
clerical privilege, had insisted upon seeing Margaret. He
had brought her the flower of some rare plant that only
bloomed once in a great many years; fifty, or thereabouts,
I think. “I must needs myself deliver it into the milk-white
bosom of the maid,” he said, stooping to kiss her, and at the
same time tucking the flower under her chin.

“I am sorry you gathered it for my sake,” said Margaret.
“You see I have my room filled already,” and she pointed
to those given previously by Samuel, classing this precious
thing among them, as of no more value.

“I will take it again, if it fails to please you,” says the
pastor, slightly offended.

Then Margaret said the odor make her sick, and she
reached forth her hand and stuck the flower in his button-hole
with a childish freedom and familiarity that completed
his displeasure. “I see you have better flowers and better
friends,” he says, and he tossed the rare and wonderful
blossom from the window, and directly, with many formal
and cold, kind wishes, went away.

He was no sooner out of her sight than Margaret repented;
she had behaved with such ungrateful rudeness. She might
at least have kept his flower. What if he were offended and
should never come to see her again! A vague, troubling
sense of loss came over her, and she began straightway to
make artful little plans as to how she should bring him back
to her. She would write a note asking him for the ring!
that was what she would do. On the following morning
came a beautiful book to Margaret from “her always affectionate
pastor and friend,” and the hope accompanied the
book that it might serve to amuse some unoccupied hour

Margaret turned the illuminated leaves with a pleasure
that was not unmingled with pride, and the note asking for
the ring was not written. And while she was thus proudly
pleased, her vanity getting the better of her judgment, for
a bishop's son was a bishop's son after all, the ascending
star of Samuel was going under the clouds.

Mr. Lightwait, when he had pettishly tossed the fine
flower from the window, made haste to see the elders of the
church, and in the end succeeded in getting an evening set
apart for the discipline of Samuel Dale. This done, he
caused Samuel to be formally notified of the meeting, and
admonished to be then and there present to speak for himself
and show cause, if cause existed, why he should not be
ejected from the membership of the church.

Thus much had come to pass, and in such state stood
matters all around when the evening fell, that again set the
wheels of our story a little more actively in motion.

The windows of Margaret's chamber were wide open, and
she sat among heaps of pillows, for she was able to sit for
an hour or more now, thus propped, seeing but not feeling
the beauty of the landscape as it brightened and blazed with
the sunset splendors. The green woodtop was stuck full
of arrows, blood-red and golden, and low along the west like
some glorious ruin, pell-mell, here a beam of amber, there a
bit of violet wall, blocks of gray granite, and beams of blue
steel and brown iron, each shading into each, and all at last
dissolving into a misty wonder, out of which the first stars
swam slowly up, large and white as silver.

Margaret was not feeling this miracle; she was hardly
seeing it; she was thinking of her lovers; and what is all
the world and the glory thereof to the best of maidens thus
occupied. She had seen Samuel again and again; he was
going to be rich, and would no doubt be more than reinstated
in the old place; and he loved her, past all peradventure,
and yet, and yet she was not all satisfied. O perversity of
the human heart!

All at once, and unobserved, he stood before her, stammering,
with side-long glance, some apology which she,
in her surprise and confusion, felt rather than heard. His
arms were full of flowers, and his happy heart beat a brightness
up into his face that shamed his flowers as he drew near
her and strewed them, with down-cast, bashful eyes, along
the snow-white coverlid.

“Dear, dear Margaret,” he says, in low, tremulous tones,
“at last — at last.”

Margaret put aside his serious meaning with a little light
laughter and clapping of her pretty hands. “Only see my
pillow,” she cries, “it is fit for a queen; just a heap of
roses!”

“Then it is fit for you,” says Samuel, “for you are my
queen of girls.” And as he said this he shied away, turning
his face quite from her.

She was vexed with him now. “If I am your queen,”
she said, in her pretty artfulness, “why then you must come
and crown me!” and she tossed him a handful of roses.

Thus challenged he came to her. “This is the crown I
would have you wear, my darlin', now and always.” He
had taken her head in his arms, and drawing her close to
his heart, bent tenderly and kissed her hair.

“No, no,” she cried, laughing and getting out of his arms,
“but that is no crown at all. Why, it would smother me;
be good now, and make me a real, true crown of these
charming flowers. Come, I will pick the fairest and you
shall tie them up.”

Then he sat down on the low bedside and began knotting
together the leaves and flowers which she put into his hand.

Sometimes, as their hands came in contact, he would keep
hers for a moment, conveying by a kiss of the rosy fingertips,
or by a little tender pressure, the tenderer meanings
which, somehow, he dare not speak.

Then she would scold him for spoiling a bud or blossom,
or perhaps playfully snatch the wreath under pretence of
instructing him. “You are so rude and awkward with the
dainty things,” she cries.

He could not answer her back in that vein; he could only
acknowledge that he was awkward and clumsy, and say that
his hands were better used to the grubbing hoe and the axe.

“Don't say such things,” says Margaret, “they make me
nervous!”

Was she thinking of the smoother speech and more delicate
hand of the bishop's son? I am afraid, if the truth were
known, he was at the bottom of the nervousness.

“I wouldn't do anything, darlin', not for the world, that
displeased you; not if I could help it,” says Samuel; “but
as I told you once long ago, I am always a-standin' in my
own light.”

Then Margaret would contrive to divert him from himself
with a thousand pretty, pleasing nothings.

“Give me more daisies, darlin'!” he says at one time;
“they are my favorite posies, you know.”

“No, I don't know,” says Margaret; “but why do you
say posy for blossom; I don't like it.” And then she says,
“what a fashion you have of dropping your g's!” Then,
more playfully, “I won't be your darlin', no how!”

“I'm afeard that is true, Margaret,” answered Samuel,
sadly.

Then she taps his cheek with her rose-buds, and says
lightly, “So you're afeared! worse and worse!” His eyes
fixed themselves upon her face now, full and steady, but she
glided out of their reproachful light back to the daisies.
“So they are your favored flowers, are they?” she says.

“No, nothin' is favored by me likin' it, as I know of,
but I like 'em all the same.”

Then she tells him that she likes them too and come to
think of it she does remember that he used to gather them
for her, and praise them, too.

“Here is one, sweet as can be!” and she leans quite
across his knee to stick it in his button-hole.

He was radiant with delight. “I always loved 'em,” he
says, “but more than ever since I saw you, for somehow
they make me think of you; and you don't mind I told you
so once? I know the very day and hour, and the gown
you wore” — (“Gown?” says Margaret; “dress, you
mean?”) “No, I will say gown, and I know the very one
you wore; it was that white muslin with the little gold stars
in it, and I know just how you looked, and you don't remember?”

“I certainly don't remember the gown,” says Margaret,
and she clapped her hands and laughed, delighted that he
had refused to obey her. “It would be so hard,” she says,
“to remember all the foolish things you have said!”

She had the long flower-chain in her hands, and still leaning
upon his knee she bound it about his arms, and called
him her prisoner. It was deep twilight in the room now;
one great star peeped in at the little window, and the white
draperies swayed softly to the touches of the evening breeze,
but without sound; the flowers made the air sweet, and
there was a feeling of the beauty all round them, which they

could not see, for all the pretty adornments which Margaret
had devised so long ago, still garnished the walls, and the few
and simple articles of furniture. It was like a baby-house
into which a giant had gotten, and Margaret was like a
baby, half pleased and half frightened; pleased with his
love, frightened lest he should demand love in return.
When the test came she was not quite ready to let go the
white hand of the bishop's son, and take his, rough and toil-worn
as it was, for good and for all.

She told him, with intent to dampen his ardor, probably,
about the rare and exquisite flower Mr. Lightwait had
brought her, and then perceiving that it had cut him to the
heart more sharply than she had intended, she renewed her
coquetries with the flower-wreath. “How shall you ever
get away?” she says, “don't you see that you are fast
bound?” and she looks up in his face so archly. She was
still leaning on his knee, and making a pretence of tying him
fast and faster with her wreath. He was not a stick nor a
stone, but a young man in love, and opening wide his arms,
and breaking the frail fetters all to pieces, he clasped her
within them, and held her close.

“You must go now, indeed you must,” cries Margaret;
“only see how late it is; why the room is dark as pitch.”

No, he would not go; “not though the darkness were
twice as deep; had he not loved her well enough, and long
enough to merit some reward now, at last?”

“O my daisy, my darlin', tell me that I may come back
some time and be with you always, and then I will go.”

“To be sure, Samuel, I will promise you anything,” she
says, “if you will only go away now.” Then she pushes
him from her and tells him that he is spoiling all her pretty
flowers; “not another moment, Samuel, not one; it is so
late and so dark; come, I will kiss you if you will only go.”

“No, Margaret, I will not be kissed in that way, and I
will not be put off with such an answer; you are not afeard
of me, I hope, as you once was, and if it comes to that, I
have a right to be here, light or no light; a right that you
give me your own self, here by your blessed pillow; don't
you remember it, my darlin'?”

Still Margaret sought to put him off; his audacity was
shocking, she told him, and she would never, as long as she
lived, love him the least grain if he did not at once obey her

commands. “Come I am your queen, and of your own
choosing, you know!”

But Samuel was solemnly in earnest, and would not be
thus lightly tossed from her hand and caught back at her
pleasure.

“I have a right to be here,” he repeated, “a right that
you yourself give me; don't you remember, my darlin',
when I carried you to this chamber, that is to me just as
sacred as the church; carried you in my arms and laid you
among these pillows; then it was that I lost my heart to
you, and then it was that you give me back yours in turn, for
your soul come up to your eyes and told me so. In that
hour God joined us together, and whom he hath joined let
no man put asunder. Dear, dear Margaret, tell me now,
won't you in plain words, what you have said to me already
without words? Tell me that nothing in life nor in death
shall ever come between us again! I know how far from
you I am in point of all attractions and accomplishments,
but just in one thing I am your equal, my darlin'; I love you
with a love that is as fresh as this daisy your hand has
blessed; a love that is just as pure and as clean as the snow
when it first falls from heaven. O Margaret, I wish you
could see me through and through, for there is nothing in
me that I am afraid to have you see; not that I mean to
say I am without sin; we are all sinners together; God have
mercy on us.”

Margaret was trembling. She knew the purity of his
love; knew that all his thoughts were as clean and as white
as the snow, and she could not choose but tremble.

“Not now; not to-night: I cannot promise you now,”
she says; “come to me to-morrow or the next day!”

“And why to-morrow, or the next day, my darlin'?”
I am here now, and you are in my arms, and something tells
me that if I go away without the promise it will never be given
to me, and I will never again hold you as I now do. I
am afeard, Margaret; not afeard to trust you, and yet I am
afeard, somehow.”

“O you monster of superstition!” cries Margaret, drawing
away from him, as it were in fright. And directly, she
says, “Well, if you will hold to such follies, you must allow
me to have mine too, and, to own the truth, there is a
trifle standing between me and my conscience that I want

to settle before I give the promise you ask;” and then she
added, “that is, if I ever give it.”

She was thinking about the ring; she must get it back.
She could not give her hand without his ring on it, and then,
perhaps, if the full truth were known, she wished just once
more to see Mr. Lightwait.

“What is it you must settle?” says Samuel; “for if it
is a trifle, why, let it go.”

“Ah! but that would be telling,” answers Margaret,
with make-believe gayety; “You must wait, it is not so long,
three days at the most.”

“Three days?” and Samuel sighed as though three days
were an eternity.

Then Margaret said, “I promise you now that I will give
the promise then. Will that do?”

“It will do if you will tell me what this thing is that is
between us now; I don't like that, Margaret.”

Then she told him, still making it a light matter, that it
was not all between herself and him; that it was just between
herself and herself;” and she entreated him to say no more
about it.

“Has Mr. Lightwait anything to do with it?” says Samuel,
with saddest seriousness.

“Mr. Lightwait; how ridiculous! What could he have
to do with it?”

“That is but an evasion, Margaret,” says Samuel; “I
don't know what he could have to do with it; that is what
I want to know; but that he has something to do with it I
am more than afeard.”

Then Margaret called him Mr. Wisdom, and said if he
was so sure, she did not see why he should ask. But it
was hard to carry it off with any amount of assurance, playful
or evasive, and her confusion could not be concealed when
he asked again, point blank, if Mr. Lightwait had not something
to do with it.

Here was a test of the simple truthfulness Margaret had
now, and all along professed, and if she had known it, all
her future hung upon the answer she should give. But so
far from coming out openly and telling him all the story, she
pouted and made pretence of being hurt that she was questioned
as though she were distrusted. “You have no right
to demand an explanation,” she says. “My pleasure should
be yours, and if it is not, why then take your own road.”

“No, Margaret, I don't demand anything; it seems to
me, though, if you loved me you would make haste to please
me in a little matter like this, if it is a little matter.”

“So you doubt my word, with the rest! Very well, sir.”
And Margaret brushed the flowers from the coverlid as
though they had been so many withered and worthless leaves.

Samuel did not heed this petulance, but went straight on.
“There is nothing in my life I wish to conceal from you,
and I am sorry there is anything you want to conceal from
me, for, agreeable to my thinkin', there can't be true love
where there isn't true confidence.”

“You are making a mountain of a molehill,” says Margaret.
“I had a fancy, a foolish fancy, perhaps, about
something I wished to do or say before I gave the promise
you asked for, and I little dreamed you would refuse me so
trifling a favor.” And then she cried outright.

Upon this Samuel said that he did not refuse her anything
that it was in his power to grant, and that he would dare say
she was all right and he all wrong; that he knew, in fact,
he had no right to ask her to love him just then, “for may
be,” says he, “when I see you again I shall be an outcast
from the church and in disgrace with all men; there are
them, them that you believe in, too Margaret, that are moving
heaven and earth against me.”

Then he told her about the meeting before which he was
summoned. “I haven't,” he says, “as you well know, the
learnin' nor the eloquence nor any of the advantages that
will be brought to bear against me, and the chances are, that
I shall be overborne and put to shame, and then my Daisy,
I shouldn't have the heart to ask you to love me. You are
right, — I will wait, trustin' in God and my clear conscience
to come off the victor.” And then he said, “If the worst
should come, I will never seek to see you, for at the best I
am not good enough for you, but be it as it may, I have one
favor to ask of you now. Wear these, little Daisy, for my
sake.” And out came the embroidered slippers!

Margaret was deeply touched; the honest, simple nature
of the man spoke out so truly in his simple gift. She hugged
the dainty things to her bosom with one hand, and burying
the other in his beard drew him down to her, and kissed him.
“Let them say what they will,” she whispered, “let them
do what they will, even though it be to put you out of the

church, it can make no difference with me, for I love you
and you know it, my good Samuel.”

The adjective was, somehow, a little patronizing; perhaps
Samuel felt it to be so, for he answered, still more downcast
than before, “I a'most know it, Margaret, but I don't feel
just satisfied, and somehow the old shadder comes between
us to-night.”

Margaret understood very well that her evasion had contributed
not a little to the shaping of this shadow, and her
heart reproached her as he sat there so broken down, so loving
and lovable before her. She could not bear to part with
him thus, and of her own free will she told him that she
would answer his question about her little secret then. She
had refused, she said, only with a girlish desire of being
coaxed. Mr. Lightwait had nothing to do with it!”

Samuel brightened wonderfully at this. “Nothin', first
nor last, my darlin'?” he said.

“Nothing, first nor last,” says Margaret, without so much
as dropping her eyelids or turning her face aside.

“Give me your hand, then, my Daisy, my darlin', my
wife.”

Margaret gave her hand, still looking straight in his eyes
as innocence could look.

He felt along the fingers. “Not this, the other hand, Margaret,”
he says.

Her cheek flushed out like fire now, but she gave the
other hand without hesitation.

He took each finger up separately.

“Where is the ring, Margaret?”

“O sure enough!” she answered. “Why it is put
away. I was afraid of losing it!”

And then she says a great deal more about her finger getting
so thin it would not stay on.

“Ah, is that all?” And Samuel spoke as if a stone had
been rolled from his heart, and with reverent trust he kissed
the little hand again and again.

Every kiss was like a stab to Margaret, and foolishly she
sought to staunch the bleeding with more lies, cementing
the whole with a little truth. She told him how sick she
had been, and how slender her finger had grown, so that the
precious ring would slip off in spite of her. “At last,” she
says, “to have it safe, for I would not have lost it for the

world, I locked it away; but the next time you come I shall
be sure to wear it.” And then she kisses him again, and
calls him the best, most generous, loving and trusting of
men.

“Yes, darlin', be sure to wear it when I come again,” says
Samuel; it is a poor little thing in itself; I could buy you
a much finer one now, but none that I should prize so much;
I bought this with the earnin's of hard work, the first money
I ever had to call my own; and I would not have parted
with it, except to you; it seemed to have my very life blood
in it. Yes, darlin', remember, and be sure to wear it when
I come agin.”

Even yet Margaret might have confessed, and all would
have been well; but her nature lacked the purity of his;
lacked the purity to appreciate his, at its worth; and she
braved it out with her lie, even showing petulance and impatience
when Samuel went on to say, “Who knows what
may happen before I come! I feel as if somethin' threatened
me. O Margaret! Margaret! be true to me, let come what
will! Make me feel that I have a refuge somewhere, — a
refuge in your arms.”

Directly he talks of the church meeting and says, “Can
it be that that is so like a shadder before me?”

“It is easy enough to say you was crazy, and didn't know
what you did!” says Margaret; “everybody thinks it, and
you can just let it go at that; it will be the best.”

“O Margaret, Margaret! what are you thinkin'? what
are you sayin'? Best? Why nothin' is best but the truth.
I know I shall be set down as a blank idiot; but, come
what will, I shall speak the simple truth; I couldn't do
otherwise to gain the world; no, Margaret, not to gain your
love, even; stand or fall, sink or swim, I must speak the
honest truth! I can face the world alone, if I have got that
in my soul; but I couldn't face one single accuser, if I stood
against a whole mountain of lies. Just what I shall say, or
just how I shall say it, I don't know; but when the hour
comes it will be give to me, for the morrow takes thought
for things of itself.”

Margaret drooped a little now and was still. He drew
her cheek down close to his heart.

“O, my darlin'! my wife that is to be,” he said, “let us
make a covenant, now and here, that we will be truthful to

ourselves, to one another, to the world and to God. All
beside will slip and slide from under us like dry sands.”

When he was gone, Margaret hid her face in her pillow,
ashamed, though she was alone and in the dark. It seemed
to her that the ground was slipping and sliding beneath her
like sand, sure enough. The first feeling was, that if it were
to do over again, she would confess all about the ring, all
about the bishop's son from first to last; but an hour was
not yet gone when she began to say to herself that his questioning
had been intrusive, and his implied doubts insulting,
and that her way of defending herself was quite justifiable.
It was just a trifle, not worth thinking about. She would
get the ring back to-morrow, or the next day, and that would
be all there would be of it. But, withal, she was not satisfied.